Andy Griffith's mammothly entertaining and animalistic debut performance as Lonesome Rhodes is unlike anything he's ever done, especially his noble Andy Griffith Show. In Elia Kazan's biting and ultimately lacerating portrait of celebrity in all its pitfalls and promises, Rhodes never stops selling himself, never shortchanges himself and is always aiming high beyond his reach. The nagging question is does Lonesome Rhodes have an ounce of sincerity to him?
An enthusiastic Arkansas radio producer, Marcia Jeffries (thrilling played by Patricia Neal), is interested in capturing real folk of her town, real talk as it were. She's looking for authenticity and finds it at a small jail where the boozing, womanizing Larry (Andy Griffith) sings with his guitar and brings such a heavenly tinge of joy into the place that the other prisoners get excited. So does Marcia who marvels at Larry's gusto and country-boy spirit that far exceeds anything you might see in the Andy Griffith Show. She gives him the nickname of "Lonesome" and pretty soon Larry's TV antics and put-downs of politicians lands him in Memphis and beyond. He stands tall, loves and practically makes love to the camera, gets high ratings and becomes something of an institution (partially based on Will Rogers, Jr.). Lonesome Rhodes makes false promises to Marcia (who is intoxicated with him) and marries a baton-swirling teenager (Lee Remick) without thinking about it (it turns out he's already married to someone else and simply forgot).
Andy Griffith's Lonesome Rhodes is the anchor of this somewhat satirical movie and Griffith makes every scene count. Kazan doesn't any stylistic flourishes or roving cameras because this guitar-playing, wise-cracking hillbilly is already a force of nature - he is in a whirlwind tornado of his own and he's spreading himself across the entire world. Everyone seems to love him because he is on TV and uses that box to manipulate his audience - he knows how to make people move from the comforts of their own home to swing to his animated presence. I am not sure there is another film about a TV celebrity that conveys those aspects as well as this one does.
Director Elia Kazan and Budd Schulberg's screenplay evokes Lonesome as a tireless promoter of his own self-image - he has little regard for anyone else though he pretends to be interested in common folk and in tired politicians who could use his high-energy charisma. Lonesome Rhodes is lost in the world of his own making - he is an attention-getter but he is not very interesting beyond that with a scant educational background. Marcia starts to see it (she practically created this monstrous figure) and Lonesome's own writer Mel Miller (Walter Matthau) is tired of his shenanigans and see that there is a facade...and nothing else. That may be the most pointed brutal point "A Face in the Crowd" makes...a man like this is easy to make into a star and just as easy to take down a man with no inner life who may not even know it. That is the tragedy of Lonesome Rhodes.
